2016 Housing Awards
Recognizing the best in housing design
Mithun sought to make to make 1180 Fourth Street a welcome, integral part of the neighborhood, while addressing San Francisco's ever-growing need for affordable and supportive housing.
The 2016 Housing Awards, presented by the AIA Housing and Community Development Knowledge Community, emphasize the importance of good housing as a necessity of life, a sanctuary for the human spirit, and a valuable national resource.
1180 Fourth Street
The project houses 150 low income, very low income and formerly homeless families and individuals, currently including 261 children. As with other affordable housing in San Francisco, the tenants were selected by lottery from a long list of qualified applicants. Given the acute housing needs most of these people have experienced, particularly the homeless, the project sponsors, city officials, funders, and architects have endeavored to provide for a spectrum of user needs.
Cloverdale749
This project is located around the block from the historically significant Miracle Mile hub comprising numerous noteworthy cultural destinations, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Adhering to a strategy to maximize land use and capitalize on zoning, the building’s 10,500 square feet push against floor area and density limitations determined by the lot’s size and location. In essence, this project is a volume that cannot expand further.
Commonwealth Honors College
The new 500,000-square-foot residential complex provides 1,500 beds in seven new buildings for the Honors Program at this University. The project brings together all classes of students in a mix of unit types, including approximately 600 beds of singles and doubles, and 900 beds in suites and apartments.
Hog Pen Creek Retreat
The house was designed to connect to the outdoors in many ways. This connection begins as you step on the boardwalk at the motor court and is evident throughout the house. This outdoor circulation spine is designed to evoke images of a pier on Lake Austin and it organizes and connects all elements of the project from the motor court down to the dining pavilion on Lake Austin. Along the way, this spine passes through the outdoor living room which serves as the main entry to the house.
Homeless Veterans Transitional Housing, VA Campus
As part of the VA’s vanguard effort to rehabilitate the West Los Angeles campus, the design team was challenged to renovate Building 209 to serve as a prototype for therapeutic residences. It is the first permanent supportive housing project on the campus, and uses an emergent service model that has proven successful in creating lasting change while taking stress off the social-service system. Through evidence-based design and close collaboration with formerly homeless veterans, Building 209 has been fully restored and transformed into therapeutic housing for 65 homeless men and women.
Independence Pass Residence
The client purchased an existing home overlooking the Nature Conservancy’s North Star Preserve, a 175-acre tract of open space located in Pitkin County on the Roaring Fork River. Pitkin County manages the preserve as a wildlife corridor and environmental education site. Along with the riparian habitat of the North Fork River, the preserve is home to valuable wetlands and a rare colony of great blue herons. The owners chose the property not only for its unobstructed views of the Rocky Mountains and the preserve, but also for its easy proximity to the town of Aspen, less than 1.5 miles away via a public trail.
Island Residence
Bohlin Cywinski Jackson incorporated a uniquely Hawaiian feel that is both welcoming and unassuming into this award winning island residence.
Newberg Residence
This single-family 1,440 square foot residence and 550 square foot guesthouse was designed to broaden the owners already strong emotional connection to the living world. The architect chose the site of an overgrown, man-made pond in an area of the owner’s farm that was not conducive to cultivation.
Oak Ridge House
The house is shaped to draw the outdoors in and lure the family out. The public/living space is a vessel of light. It awakens the house with a vibrant play of morning sun, then settles into a wash of reflected daylight until its afternoon encore prepares the house for the evening. Time seems to expand. The room is never simply an interior. Boundaries of space are indeterminate, alive and negotiable.
Image credits
Bruce Damonte